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Cambridge University Tape Recording Society.

andrew d

pfm Member
https://magazine.alumni.cam.ac.uk/cambridge-university-tape-recording-society/
A great read. The society recorded John Lennon's first post Beatle gig, the only surviving tape from a Nick Drake live gig and much more including Hawkwind.
Members included Ray Dolby , John Dawson - Arcam, Jonathan Halliday, Nimbus Records and many others. Gary Numan apparently visited Spaceward to record with a guitar band, saw a Minimoog the rest is history.
 
Interesting stuff, does the archive still exist? Sounds like some decent material there!
 
Not sure how much exists. Spaceward's history. http://www.spaceward.co.uk/spaceward-studios/links.htm
From the stories section...The Hawkwind tape may exist.....

Hawkwind, Last Minute Put-Together Boogie Band & Pink Fairies
Live at Cambridge, Corn Exchange Jan 27, 1972



The recording of the concert was organised at the last minute and the equipment was poor as all that was available was a rather poor mixer so we just stuck a stereo mic pair across the stage for drums/backline and mixed in some PA mix for front. We were positioned on the top of a sort of cloakroom arrangement in a corner near the stage (in about an inch of thick dust) but had a bad view of the stage from the equipment area due to columns in the building. I spent most of my time with headphones at the troublesome mixer so saw little.

The whole affair was a shambles with a fight breaking out around the stage at one point destroying at least one of the mics. I was pretty naive at the time and can not say I saw Syd Barret but everyone was saying he was there. There were a number of rambling untogether acts and I am pretty convinced that the Syd Barret All Stars was mentioned at the time, as well as "The last minute put together boogie band".

Recording was onto a 1/4track Revox at 7&1/2 ips (all we had then) and I do recall listening to it after the gig over the next months. Because we changed all our recording equipment quickly to 1/2track (standard professional format) the old 1/4 track tapes couldn't then be listened to. I recall vaguely that it existed for some time but later attempts to find it failed, e.g. when Robyn Hitchcock spent a day (around 1980) checking all the tapes in our library at Victoria Street.

It is possible that the tape was placed with a whole collection of 1/4 track tapes that Gary Lucas had at the time (it was his Revox) and I am trying to find out if he has any knowledge of these. I've lost touch with him in the last few years since he moved away from Cambridge but I think I can track him down again.


Mike Kemp, engineer
 
At Cambridge Nick Drake played solo and also the recorded concert with a string section arranged by Robert Kirby.

Edit:
"It definitely exists. Nick playing 5 songs live with a string quartet in the Bateman Room at Caius College in Cambridge in 1968. The set was recorded by Peter Rice who ran the Cambridge University Tape Recording Society. Peter held on to the live tape as well as another recording he made of Nick solo - both tapes were made available to the estate but for some reason they don't want the live tape released."
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...by-album-all-things-nick-drake.772147/page-25
 


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